At present the setting up and packaging in boxes of tubular containers of the so-called squeezable type for more or less viscous paste products is carried out in two distinct stages, in one of which the preformed open-ended squeezable tubes are filled in series through their open end which is then closed for example via one or more folds of the terminal section of the tube end, and in the second the tubes thus set up are packaged in boxes that are either assembled or not. The undertaking of these distinct stages of setting up and packaging respectively on the equipment or so-called automated machines known today takes place on two distinct separate machines with or without more or less automated and synchronized devices connecting the two machines.
On these known equipment or machines the tubular containers or tubes to be set up, advancing incrementally along the setting-up line of the filling machine for filling from the open end and sealing thereof on completion of the filling operation in more than one stage, firstly for example during the successive feeding of the tubes to said setting-up line, are free because released when going from a holding or control and transfer element to a subsequent element, and also, again by way of example, as regards the stage of their packaging in boxes, whereby besides a possible degradation of their characteristics following creasing or kinks that could be caused on their outer surface or skirt due to the actual time required for the various operations, or because of other reasons, the working speeds are conditioned by output rates per unit of time that often are found insufficient and in any case limited.
Attempts to overcome the above-mentioned speed limits of the machines at present known and obtain a higher output rate per unit of time have indeed taken place with machines with so-called multiple setting-up lines, with a plurality of individual operating units. Such a proposition for realizing machines with multiple setting-up lines has substantially suggested to dispose the operating units in such a way as to interconnect them to an appropriate control system drawing its power from a single motion source. With these machines the output speed could be increased, but it is evident that for dynamic reasons it can never be increased proportionally to the number of operating units adopted, that is doubled, trebled, etc., as the reciprocating masses would consequently be increased, thus reducing the unit speed and therefore the overall speed. In fact, if with a machine with a single setting-up line having rotating and linearly moving elements with a reciprocating action it is possible to reach the maximum typical speed, or speed One, of products per minute, it is clear that the speed obtainable by doubling said mobile operating units connected to a single source of motion cannot be doubled because the units added and their respective components, obviously dimensionally oversized, would in fact considerably increase said moving masses. Furthermore, if in regard to these machines with multiple operating units one considers also the problem of simultaneous feeding, it becomes even more evident that on such machines the increase in output speed per unit of time can never be proportional to the increase in the individual units and how they will never embody on a practical plane particular technical and economic features that are advantageous in relation to the use of a corresponding number of individual conventional machines. The technical and financial benefits that could derive from these multiple setting-up line machines are evidently even less tangible on the practical-productive plane when one considers that the above-mentioned structuring into multiple operating units with a single motion source, due to the position that said units in their respective individual configurations would necessarily have as an assembly, limits the machine performance denying it the character of universality traditionally appreciated in the specific field of use due to the practical and financial advantages deriving from the use of a universal machine with a single setting-up line.